Page 88 of Montana Heat

Kenzie was pulling at my arm. “You guys have to be careful. They’re armed. And Alan is out for blood.”

Every once in a while, Alan yelled out some threat, obviously trying to intimidate Kenzie.

“As long as he’s running his mouth, he’s giving us an advantage. Letting us know exactly where he is.” I kept my voice low, just slightly louder than a whisper. A whisper actually carried farther to others than a consistently low tone. “It’s the quiet guys he’s hired we have to worry about.”

“One man down.” Hunter’s voice came through my ear. I wasn’t sure exactly whatdownmeant coming from him. “Southeast side of the cabin.”

Apparently, Daniel wasn’t sure what Hunter meant either. “Let’s try to keep the body count to a minimum, if possible.”

“Affirmative,” Hunter replied.

That still didn’t tell us if he’d killed anybody or not. But honestly, I didn’t care. The only thing I cared about was getting Kenzie out of this safely. If some bad guys didn’t survive, that was their own problem.

But just as I’d feared, shudders were racking Kenzie’s body. She was slumping over against me, her system shutting down. I ripped off my black beanie and pushed it down onto her head before pulling her as close to my body as I could.

I was no medic, but I knew enough about survival situations to know we were fighting a losing battle as long as she was out in the elements. She was losing heat from too many sources, plus her body was already run down from lack of sleep and God knew what else.

I sat next to her and pulled off my boots and socks, then crouched down to put them on Kenzie.

“N-no.” She tried to push my hands away. “You need them.”

I cupped her cheeks and put my face right in front of hers. “This is not just me flirting, okay? I’m not being gallant. We need to get you warm if we want to get out of this alive.”

“But—”

“City, I need you to trust me.” We didn’t have time to debate this.

She nodded. “I do. I do trust you, Jensen. Tell me what to do.”

Her trust meant everything to me.

I took the socks and boots and put them on her feet. The boots would hardly stay on, even with the ankles laced up as tight as they could go. But it at least meant she wasn’t leaking heat from either her feet or head now. That would mitigate at least some of what she was up against physically.

“You have to be cold, Mackenzie,” Alan called out, much closer than I would like him to be. “You can’t survive out here on your own, dressed like you are. Come back to the cabin, and we can talk. I lost my temper. You always make me lose my temper.”

“Then get some self-restraint, asshole,” she muttered.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her in the opposite direction from the cabin. I did my best to ignore the biting pain shooting through my feet from the cold, but without my hat and jacket, it wouldn’t be long before I was the one in trouble.

We would have to deal with that when we came to it. Right now, Kenzie was in the more dire shape of the two of us.

Keeping her hand in mine, I moved us as quietly as I couldthrough the trees. Her lack of energy, combined with the boots that were much too large for her, caused her to keep stumbling. She would’ve fallen multiple times if I hadn’t had hold of her.

“Another down.” Hunter spoke again.

But again, no definition of what down meant.

“Going off comms,” Hunter said, slightly out of breath, as if he was running.

“Hunter, no. Stay on comms.” Daniel was the team leader. The guys listened to him.

But Hunter wasn’t on the normal Resting Warrior team. And evidently, he had already disconnected his communications unit.

“Fuck,” Daniel said. “Lucas.”

“On it.” Lucas’s voice was breathier now too. He was also running.

I couldn’t worry about family politics at the moment. Hunter was on our side, and that was all I cared about.

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